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Hello Folks

You might like to pass on the following to any Astro Societies or individuals interested in Meteors. I attach the text as a .pdf to make that even easier to do.

All the best

Brian

Perseids and the UK Meteor Radar Project

The UK Meteor Beacon has been operational since May 2022 enabling anyone with a suitable receiver to detect and study radio echoes from meteors entering the earth's atmosphere over a large part of the UK. The Beacon Transmitter is located at the Sherwood Observatory of the Mansfield and Sutton Astronomical Society.

The second phase of this project has been to establish a network of receivers accessible via the internet for anyone to study meteors without the need for their own dedicated receiver. “The UK Meteor Radar Project” is a Bi-Static radar to study meteors.

Receivers in the network stream their data to a central server which users can access. Up to 6 receivers are displayed at . Details of how to use the display can be found at the project web site:- see “Observing GB3MBA” and the live displays are explained at . Select “Using the Live Streams”.

We aim to maintain the live stream at 24/7 and during the Perseids this August we will provide an additional stream which has greater bandwidth and includes sound. This can be viewed at . Again the “Using the Live Streams” document explains the display.

Individuals or societies observing the Perseids will find these live streams of radio echoes a useful addition to their optical observations. The radio echoes can be viewed by day and night and in all weather conditions.

Hello Folks

I had promised to stream a receiver to YouTube during the period around the time of? Perseids. This is proving to be tedious in a development environment when bench space, PC, antenna time etc are required for other things as switching ON a you tube stream after it has been interrupted is a chore. However the same data can more? easily be streamed to the BATC Streamer which can be found at:- . I will try to keep this stream on for a day or two either side of the Perseids peak. I'll be working on that being about the 11th to 14th August but If anyone has a better suggestion for dates please let me know?. Meanwhile the 6 receiver live stream at :- is operating 24/7.

If anyone would like the stream to be ON at a particular time, perhaps for a demonstration or other event, please let me know and I'll do my best to make it available.

The 6 receiver live? stream has been updated recently with improved colours and brightness resolution. As we approach the Perseids there are lots of interesting echoes to be seen at particularly in the morning. Three examples are attached.

Brian

The live stream at is back ON.

Around the date of the Perseids peak I will stream one receiver to the BATC streamer at . This stream is running now but will be on and off as the resources are needed for other things.

I do not now plan to stream to YouTube as this is very tedious for me to set up bearing in mind the other pressures on resources / bench space etc here .

Later in the project it will be easier to stream to YouTube.

Brian

Sorry to report that the Live streams from are not available at present.

The Server is OK but we don't have a fix yet.? The beacon is operating Normally.

Brian

Hello Folks

After a few hiccups the Live stream to YouTube is currently operating again.? Search for "GB3MBA Live Stream" on YouTube. It will not be operating 24/7 as the receiver hardware and PC providing the stream are required for other duties. I will try to keep the stream live for a period around the peak of the Perseids on the 12th August. Later in the project development we hope to provide a more reliable stream to YouYube.

Meanwhile the project live stream of all active receivers? is a more reliable way of seeing the activity of the receivers in the network. This is at

This continues to show meteor echoes at a rate of 2 per minute or more across the day with the highest rates from 00:00 to 12:00z. Thanks to Dave Jones at the Norman Lockyer Observatory that receiver is back in operation and the faulty unit will be coming back to me for investigation and repair.

Brian

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Thanks Tim

Great stuff.? Brian

Feeding youtube audio to ARGO to display the events.
Tim N4WLO

Fascinating!

Well done Brian

Hi Brian

i like it with the timing marks. We need to updated the channel description so people other than us know what they are looking at.?

John B?

For the time being I have increased the displayed bandwidth to YouTube stream at to +/- 2.5KHz.

This brings the timing pulses into view. These injected at the front end of the receiver to enable us to overcome latency through the receiver, the internet and the Server when we come to making detailed analysis of the echoes.

With this bandwidth shown on the screen we loose some resolution of the echoes.? Let me know what you think please.? I will change back to +/- 500Hz later today. Brian

Hello Folks

We are now testing the YouTube live stream from one of the UK Meteor beacon Project receivers.

To view go to There are plenty of interesting echoes as I write this.

We plan to activate this stream during the Perseids meteor shower. I will leave it on test whenever possible in the mean time.

(The PC running the stream does have other duties sometimes ). Brian

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Yes two images captured while I was preparing the agenda for the next UK Meteor beacon team meeting.

The first shows a tail echo seen at the Norman Lockyer Observatory (NLO) and NW? Hampshire (NWH)? with Horizontal polarisation but not with Vertical polarisation.

The second image shows a head echo seen at NLO and Malvern and with both Horizontal and vertical polarisation at NW Hampshire. Thus could be because the echo retained it's circular polarisation or, and this is? more likely, because the trajectory of the head echo was at near 45 degrees to the horizontal as viewed from NWH

Brian

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These screenshots show two events captured yesterday

The first is of interest because the tail echo? was seen by all 5 receivers so was not directional? or linearly polarised? ... the beacon illuminates the region where meteors burn up with Right Hand Circular polarisation RHCP.

The second image shows a tail echo seen by the Norman Lockyer Observatory and NW Hampshire but only with vertical polarisation indicating that this echo was linear polarised.

When a signal is reflected from a plane? ( mirror like ) surface circularity is maintained but reversed from Right Hand to Left Hand. So in the second image it appears that some RHCP energy is being collected by a cylindrical or wire like reflector which radiates the energy with linear polarisation. This tells us something of the shape and dimensions of the reflecting region. When a linear antenna receives a CP signal there is a loss of the order of 3dB compared to using a correctly polarised CP antenna for receive.

Brian

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Would anyone like to interpret this interesting echo. Observed from NW Hampshire it is mainly horizontally polarised. Armagh sees the same echo with it's horizontally polarised antenna. The? Norman Lockyer Observatory? sees something quite different. Note the differences in frequency / Doppler shift.

These dishes are looking rather nice.



Tony

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Here are the same echo seen in NW Hampshire by the live stream and by another receiver at NW Hampshire running SDR Console with a greater bandwidth and faster waterfall.

This illustrates the greater detail that it is possible to capture with a faster waterfall. The live stream waterfall lasts about one minute and has +/- 100Hz bandwidth the SRD Console waterfall lasts about 30 seconds and has +/-500Hz bandwidth.

With a fast waterfall it's much harder to capture events manually as these were,? we are working on capturing events automatically with a much faster rate than can conveniently be displayed.

Data will be transferred from rolling buffers to more permanent memory for later analysis when significant events are seen. The embedded timing, not shown here, will enable events to be correlated.

B